Monster Zero x SciFi Japan - Archive Only

I had a lot of fun revisiting the original Mobile Suit Gundam recently, this time in the form of the movies as opposed to the dubbed series I watched on Toonami back in the day. Of course, I didn't see the whole thing back then because of how it was infamously pulled due to 9-11 before its last few episodes could air.

08th MS Team and War in the Pocket are really the only other ones I'm interested in getting, as I also loved them on Toonami. I actually missed the boat on Gundam Wing and resolved to jump onboard when the Universal Century stuff started airing, but sadly Sunrise's crazy dream of airing all the Gundam shows in order on American TV wouldn't come to pass.

In an unusual twist, the UK gets the original Gundam Movie trilogy blu-rays shortly before the US, on 27th March, albeit currently in a limited 500-copy run exclusive to Anime Limited's website. I jumped on the pre-order the moment I heard about it, but Anime Limited have a history of delayed releases. So imagine my surprise when my box set arrived today, a full 10 days early! Here's hoping they haven't screwed up the discs somehow.

When I was young I got into Wing after it had already aired a few times. Maybe it was in its last two reruns (had to wait for it to cycle through, as the serialized story wouldn't make much sense otherwise). I made it a point to watch the Universal Century Gundam shows when they aired in 2001, and while I loved them they didn't go over as well as Wing so they shifted gears and showed G Gundam the following year and I was disgusted! I was into the more realistic, serious war stories told in Gundam and I was upset they turned over to this silly super robot version. I never gave that show a chance.

Fast forward to now: I watch the first two episodes of both on Crunchyroll and I find the teen melodrama of Wing a bit hard to stomach, while G Gundam immediately grabbed me as a lot of fun and kinda reminds me of a mixture of some of my other Toonami favorites from back in the day (like DBZ, Outlaw Star, and Big O).

The moral of the story is: you were stupid when you were younger.

Read recently that they tried to make a Hollywood Gundam movie in the early/mid '80s which would have used early CGI (think "The Last Straighter") for the mobile suits and spaceships. The mind boggles!

to this day Wing is my favorite gundam show and not nearly as dark as some of the gundams of today.

I liked G Gundam instantly myself. Although I love the serious tone of series like 0083 and Zeta. G Gundam had the fun spirit of a Super Robot series such as Mazinger or Getter Robo. In fact in many of the SRW games it is only the Shining and Burning/God Gundam that are classified as "Super" rather than "Real" robots as all the other Gundams are...always thought that was kind of cool.

The fact that they have Zeta as a bottom tier series instantly makes their opinion void to me.

They have 8th MS team on there, I wasn't aware that was adapted into a movie?...But as with all long format TV series (50 episodes or so etc..), editing them down in to movies very rarely if ever works into a coherent story. Anime has been doing it forever. It's more of a "cliffnotes" version for anyone who doesn't want to sit down and watch a whole 15 episodes, so they edit it all down into a 2-3 hour film, which unfortunately results in an incoherent mess. I've never really understood it myself, but I don't think the anime industry will stop doing it any time soon.

Yeah I know about Millers report, I have it on DVD (we discussed it elsewhere). I'm talking about the series 08th MS Team itself, wasn't aware that was edited into a movie format.

So...more releases just recently announced -Gundam Wing on Blu-Ray, which I'm sure will have a huge nostalgia factor draw, and Season 1 of Iron Blooded Orphans.

What's odd is Funimation is releasing IBO....I thought Bayview/Sunrise had exclusivity since Bandai of America went belly up...?